Thursday, September 13, 2012

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Living Green With Jerinda: First Experience with Perfectly Posh Skincare Products

I am a sucker for healthy skin care products, so when a representative from Perfectly Posh offered me the opportunity to try out their “natural” products, I was thrilled to get to try out something new. I got to choose three items from their current catalog, and I tried to be diverse in my choosing to get a good sampling.

Perfectly Posh claims to use natural ingredients that are among the best on Earth.They are free of parabens and paraffin,sulfates, SLS, gluten, lanolin, and soy. I haven’t used any chemicals in my house for many years, either in cleaning or body care products, so I am very sensitive to them. I have to be honest and say that I was a little disappointed with some of the ingredients in the products, which I’ll elaborate upon with each product.

I’m going to start this review by saying that the Perfectly Posh products are a much safer alternative to many mainstream cosmetics available. For me though, a person who is very sensitive to chemicals, they were too harsh. The chemical smell from them burned my eyes and irritated my sensitive skin. This may seem like I’m giving them a bad review, when that is not the case. If you are a person who is looking for a safer, cost-effective alternative to mainstream products, Perfectly Posh could be perfect for you, if you do not have sensitive skin. If you are like me, these products may irritate you like they did me. I typically check all my ingredients on the website Environmental Working Group, and that’s where my information comes from on these products.

(Click any photo to enlarge)

The first product I tried was The Stripper, which retails for $22, and uses mud and clay to pull free-radicals from your skin which everyone encounters every day. From their website: “Take it all off when you smooth this creamy vanilla mud all over. Top to bottom and back again, let this detoxifying blend help you expel harmful pollution and keep youthful, healthy skin.” Kaolin, the main ingredient and the detoxifier is a fair rating on EWG, meaning it is not the best, but also not the worst. Bentonite clay would have been a much better detoxifier as opposed to kaolin. It also contains cetyl alcohol, which is non-toxic, but is known to dry out skin and tends to cause problems in people with eczema. Over half of the other ingredients in The Stripper are considered “Fair” in terms of toxicity. Now, for many people this would be a much safer alternative to what they’re already using, and therefore a win. For me though, this is much more unsafe than many of my current products and not as good at detoxing as some other mud masks available.

Sugar Fix is a sweet sugar, honey, jojoba, and almond body scrub that helps to slough off dead, dry skin and make it glow. It retails for $20. It is very thick, non-greasy, phthalate-free and contains many natural ingredients to help nourish skin. Sugar Fix was much less irritating to my skin than The Stripper was, but still was too chemical smelling for my taste. Ingredients like polysorbate-20 and tocopherol contributed to that chemical smell. Sugar Fix did have far fewer “fair” rated ingredients though, so it is a safer product than The Stripper.

Finally, I got to try the Perfectly Posh Summerlicious set, which contains four products. This yummy scented set contains Lemon Rice Beach Body Shimmer, Teasy Breezy After-Sun Body Aloe, Beachy Body Mister, and Teasy Breezy Twinkly Dry Toe Oil and retails for $40. The Mister in this set does contain alcohol and the Shimmer contains dyes, which are aren’t necessarily unsafe but do irritate sensitive skin. The most unsafe ingredient comes in the After-Sun Body Aloe and is Titanium Dioxide, which is a carcinogen. Other than those, most of the ingredients in this set were mostly safe. Some questionable, but none that were really bad. I actually like this set the most. It smells wonderful, sort of like cocoa butter, and each works well. The Mister smells great, Shimmer gives your skin just a slight glimmer to it, Toe Oil makes feet sandal-ready and beautiful, and the aloe lotion soothes burnt skin. This set was my favorite of the three products I received.

After reading my review, you’ll just have to determine what would be best for your lifestyle. I don’t want to discourage from buying Perfectly Posh products, but just do your research before investing in any “natural” skin care products. If you are just now starting to consider detoxing your home and lowering your toxic load, I’d say these would be a great starting point.

Thank you to Perfectly Posh for providing complimentary product samples for us to base this review upon.